Starting Points: Philippines

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May 28, 2010

Downturn Does Little to Slow Global Flow of Workers

Image by inju via Flickr

By JASON DePARLE

MANILA — The world may be staggering through its worst economy in 70 years, but international migration, an ever-growing force, shows few signs of retreat.

Globally, the number of migrants appears undiminished, and last year they sent home more money than forecasters expected. Many migrants did lose jobs, but few decided to return home, even when others offered to pay.

In some places, demand for foreign labor grew.

From the Arizona Statehouse to Calabria, critics warn that porous borders hurt native workers, threaten local cultures and increase crime. But even a downturn of rare magnitude did less than expected to slow the flows, revealing instead the persistent forces that keep migrants venturing abroad.

Perhaps no place shows the lure of migration as much as the Philippines, a nation of nearly 100 million people, where a quarter of the labor force works overseas. Despite the world’s sagging economy, the country set records last year for the number of workers sent abroad and the sums they returned.

“We hardly felt it — the global financial crisis,” said Marianito D. Roque, the labor secretary, who has been promoting the virtues of Filipino workers from Alberta to Abu Dhabi.

On every corner of this jeepney-jammed capital, someone seems to be coming from or going to a job overseas. At the Magsaysay Training Center, beside Manila Bay, college graduates scrub replicas of cruise ship cabins, hoping for housekeeping jobs that can pay four times the local wage. A park across the street doubles as a sailors’ bazaar, a reminder that the Philippines supplies at least a fifth of the world’s seafarers.

In government seminars a mile away, throngs of outbound maids learn to greet future bosses in Arabic, Italian and Cantonese. Some cry through a film about a nanny who wins an overseas job but loses the love of her children.

Doctors go abroad to work as nurses. Teachers go to work as maids. Would-be migrants set off sparks at the Tesda Women’s Center, where the government offers free training to female welders.

One of them, Desiree Reyes, 29, spent three years assembling computers in Taiwan until the recession idled the factory. Back home, she heard that Australia needed welders and paid up to $2,500 a month, about 10 times her Manila wage.

“I want to go abroad again, and they’re saying that women welders have more opportunities,” she said.

Elsewhere on campus, women learn to fix cars, sew skirts and set banquet tables. Posters celebrate alumnae overseas. (“Marjury Briones is now working at the Pars Hotel in Bahrain as a flair bartender.”)

With soft features, Ms. Reyes looks more like a cosmetics clerk than an industrial trainee. But she likes the sight of molten metal and ignores the burn marks on her hands. “I don’t think of it as man’s work — it’s just work,” she said. “Life in the Philippines is tough.”

The financial crisis follows an age of growing mobility that has scattered migrant workers across the globe. Polish nannies raise Irish children and Indians build towers in Dubai. Of 15 million American jobs created in the decade before the bust, nearly 60 percent were filled by the foreign born, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. To be sure, the crisis has hurt migrants, often disproportionately. A report by the Migration Policy Institute found that in the past three years, joblessness grew by 4.7 percentage points among native-born Americans, while rising 9.1 points among immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Anti-immigrant feeling in some places has swelled, at times to the point of violence. South African riots in 2008 killed dozens of African migrants, including many Zimbabweans. In Italy, attacks on African farm workers this year brought condemnation from the pope.

But with few exceptions, the hard times have not sent migrants home. Spain, Japan and the Czech Republic tried to pay foreign workers to go, but found few takers. Likewise, the number of Mexicans leaving the United States has not grown, said Jeffrey S. Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. While the economy and tightened borders have reduced new arrivals, he said, the total population of Mexican migrants remains unchanged.

Hania Zlotnik, director of the United Nations Population Division, said, “Worldwide, the crisis has slowed the growth of migration, but the number of migrants is still increasing.”

There are many reasons. Some “receiving” countries have escaped recession, especially in the Middle East. Some “sending” countries have been hit hard, giving migrants more reason to leave or stay away. Even in bad economies, migrants typically do work that others avoid, like picking crops or cleaning toilets.

And many migrants move for noneconomic reasons, to join spouses or parents. That helps explain why migration, once established, is hard to reverse.

Still, even scholars who have long studied these dynamics expected the battered global economy to have done more to deter migration. “It is the resiliency of international migration flows that again is most striking,” wrote two migration scholars, Stephen Castles of the University of Oxford and Mark J. Miller of the University of Delaware, in an April paper.

To grasp the tenacity of migrants, consider Fortz Portagana, 58, a Filipino who moved to Oman in 2006 to start a small shipping business. When the economy swooned, “I had it in my mind to go back — but what can I do back home?” he said.

He had exhausted his savings to go abroad, and returning empty-handed to his small farm would mean a loss of face. Instead, he borrowed from relatives with jobs in the Middle East, cut expenses and continued to send home $200 a month.

When business improved, he hired one son and found a job for another. A cycle that began with one migrant worker in Muscat ended with three. “This is a better place for them to make a living,” Mr. Portagana said.

Migrants from the developing world sent home $316 billion last year, according to the World Bank. That was 6 percent less than the previous year, but more than the bank predicted, and $80 billion more than migrants sent as recently as 2006. Since private investment fell much more, the relative importance of the migrants’ money grew.

While remittances to Mexico took an outsize hit (16 percent over two years), the Philippines offers a contrasting model of overseas work.

Mexicans are closely tied to one place (the United States), and one industry (construction). Filipinos work across the globe in dozens of occupations. Mexican migration is unmanaged and mostly illegal. Filipino workers are promoted by the state, and most go with contracts and visas.

Mr. Roque has spent his career selling Filipino labor, and as the economy slowed he stepped up his marketing. He won agreements with four Canadian provinces, which took thousands of temporary workers, including nurses, nannies, and coffee shop workers. In Saudi Arabia, a construction boom brought more jobs in the building trades. In 2008, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made a plea to the emir of Qatar for more work visas.

Despite the downturn, annual deployments of workers rose by a third over the past two years, to 1.4 million. The sums they sent home rose 19 percent, to $19.4 billion, according to the World Bank. “People were projecting a doomsday scenario,” Mr. Roque said.

The Magsaysay Training Center in Manila feels less like a vocational school than a theme park of migrant trades, filled with replicas of foreign work sites.

Student sailors in a simulator room steer ships through high-tech storms. Student bakers in toques practice cream puff injections. A glass wall offers a view of a luxury hotel room, where instructors watch trainees wipe the marble bath and stock the minibar.

Brynnerson Cepe, 25, beamed as he bustled about in a crisp gold uniform. He spent four years earning a college degree in hotel and restaurant management and three years as a Starbucks supervisor. But in the hierarchy of Philippine status and pay, the real upward movement would come from making a hotel bed overseas. “You can earn double or more,” he said. “And you can get other opportunities.”

The social costs of migration — abused workers, adultery, abandoned families — are widely recognized here, even as poverty persuades many people to leave.

Last month, the government brought home four planeloads of distressed workers from the Middle East. Some had lived for months in Philippine Embassies after running away from abusive bosses. They arrived to a scene of manufactured festivity.

A parade of maids wore matching T-shirts, donated by a corporate sponsor. President Arroyo, who calls migrants “heroes,” arrived to shake hands. A Filipino comic did a routine, leaving television cameras to capture the laughter of the dispossessed.

Ivy Lumagbas, 31, said she did not know whether to laugh or cry. She had gone to Dubai because her husband was jobless and her children hungry. The conditions were so bad — one meal a day, she said, and four hours of sleep — she barely lasted a month. But she was already saying that she might have to go back.

“When I see how many of us there are, I feel hopeless” about getting work at home, she said.

Then she joined in waving a Philippine flag and singing the national anthem, which celebrates the “chosen land” so many feel they must leave.

May 9, 2010

As election nears in Philippines, Aquino scion seems to be heavy favorite

Benigno Aquino III has a 20-point cushion in recent polls. If he does not win, he has said that supporters would take to the streets in another "people power" uprising. (Nicky Loh - Reuters)

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 9, 2010; A08

QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES -- Benigno Aquino III, who appears likely to win the Philippine presidency on Monday, is unmarried and has no children. By his own account, he has been unlucky in love.

"All the plans I have had with respect to that field have not materialized," Aquino said in an interview. With an impish smile, he added that his romantic disappointments have a political upside: "You don't have the attendant problems of a first lady like Imelda Marcos."

That jab at the widow of former president Ferdinand Marcos fits neatly into the good-vs.-evil campaign narrative that has catapulted Aquino far ahead of eight other candidates in opinion polls. Voters here often see politics as melodrama starring rich families -- and their all-time favorite is the feud between the Marcos and Aquino clans.

Benigno Aquino Jr., father of the bachelor who would be president, was fatally shot at Manila's international airport when he returned from exile in the United States to challenge Marcos in 1983. Taking up the cause of her martyred husband, Corazon Aquino led a "people power" uprising that overthrew Marcos, exposed the shoe-buying excesses of his wife and captivated much of the world. Corazon Aquino served as president until 1992.

When she died of cancer in August, a mass outpouring of grief fired up the dynastic machinery of Philippine politics. As a result, her only son became the chosen one. He's a low-key personality who shoots pool, enjoys jazz and says he had never seen himself as a national savior.

"I wasn't thinking of running," Aquino, known as Noynoy, said during the interview in his mother's modest house on the edge of Manila, where he has lived most of his life. "I wasn't clamoring to be the person responsible for solving all the problems."

But since his mother's death, the 50-year-old has come to embody a national yearning for decent leadership in this Southeast Asian country, where poverty, violence and corruption have surged in recent years. During his campaign stops, thousands upon thousands of Filipinos jump with joy and rush to touch him.

A legacy candidacy

Aquino is not a dynamic speechmaker, nor is he possessed of an impressive résumé. He ran a company that sold Nike shoes. He worked at his family's 11,000-acre ranch. He helped his mother cope with several coup attempts and was badly wounded during an attack on the presidential palace. (He still has a piece of shrapnel in his neck, and a gunshot wound causes him to walk with a slight limp.) As a lawmaker since 1998, he has had no major legislative achievements.

Aquino readily acknowledges that his candidacy was an invention of voters nostalgic for the moral clarity they associate with his parents.

"It became the entry point," he said. "All of this became possible because of the people."

Although his record is regarded as thin, it is apparently clean. Unlike so many politicians here, he has not been linked to scandal. His honest image -- combined with his mother's legacy of personal probity -- has become the essence of his campaign. "Without corrupt politicians, there are no poor people," says his ubiquitous campaign slogan.

Aquino said that if he were elected, he would aggressively investigate President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose nine years in power have been marked by major corruption scandals. Term limits prevent Arroyo from running again for president, although she is seeking a seat in the House of Representatives.

"The message has to be sent that if you commit a crime, there has to be punishment," Aquino said.

With a 20-point cushion in recent polls and an expert consensus that he is likely to win, Aquino says that only electoral fraud can stop him from becoming president. If he does not win Monday, he has told reporters, his supporters would take to the streets in another "people power" uprising.

'A level playing field'

As for what he will do as president, Aquino said tax collection would be a priority. Economists here estimate that tax evasion deprives the government of about a third of its annual operating budget.

"We already have a list of people we will be investigating for tax avoidance," Aquino said, adding that he is prepared to send "people to jail on a fast-track basis."

A potential hiccup in the tax-enforcement scheme is Aquino's blue-blood background. He comes from one of the country's most prominent landowning families. His campaign supporters include families that have dominated the nation's economy for centuries. Economists here say many of these families have gotten away with egregious tax fraud for decades, while pushing the legislature to grant them tax exemptions.

"How beholden am I?" Aquino said, when asked about possible conflicts with moneyed supporters. "Each time I talk to one of the groups, I tell them, 'You will have a level playing field.' Our obligation is to develop the entire economy, not just to develop certain key players."

Doubts about ability

Away from the campaign, there is considerable doubt about Aquino's competence.

"He has the genius of the below-average, looking and sounding like someone who does not know how to govern a country," said Homobono A. Adaza, a lawyer who worked for Aquino's mother before she prosecuted him on charges of involvement in a coup attempt.

"He doesn't have a clue," said Victor A. Abola, an economist at the University of Asia and the Pacific. "We may have a replay of the failures of his mother's government."

Although Corazon Aquino's honesty was never doubted, her leadership was often feckless, bouncing from crisis to crisis, and many remember her tenure for chronic power outages. Her signature issue was land reform, but her relatives resisted -- and some continue to resist -- state efforts to distribute the family estate to 10,000 farmers.

As the election nears, it appears that a plurality of voters has decided to trust Benigno Aquino. "They know his achievements are not inspiring," said Arsenio Balisacan, a professor of economics at the University of the Philippines. "But they are tired of corruption. They are willing to take a gamble."

Special correspondent Carmela Cruz contributed to this report.

An Expatriate Filipino Writes of a Parallel Life - NYTimes.com

By JOYCE HOR-CHUNG LAU

HONG KONG — The story begins with the death of Crispin Salvador, an expatriate Filipino author living in New York, whose body is found floating in the Hudson River. He had been scathingly critical of his home country before his mysterious demise.

Christie Johnston for The International Herald Tribune

Miguel Syjuco's first novel, “Ilustrado,” written after he left the Philippines, won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008.

It is part of a novel, a satire of the chaos and violence of Philippine politics called “Ilustrado,” the first book by Miguel Syjuco, an expatriate Filipino author living in Montreal. And — if the book was not clear enough in its theme that art reflects life — the fictional narrator and Salvador’s protégé is also named Miguel Syjuco.

The real-life Mr. Syjuco, a dapper 33-year-old, has been promoting “Ilustrado,” which won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize, on a tour through the United States and Britain, where it will be released in coming months.

Sipping tea amid the wood paneling of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club — in a camel blazer with matching red pocket square and red cuff links — he looked the part of a gentleman from a good Philippine family. Mr. Syjuco, who once held entry-level jobs at The New Yorker and other magazines before deciding to devote himself full time to writing, is clearly from the educated upper classes that he skewers in his book.

“My family, my friends, my colleagues — we are the elites,” he said. “We are a wealthy, beautiful country, and we’ve screwed it up so badly. The majority of wealth is controlled by a minority. And we don’t know when enough is enough. The elite don’t want one mansion; they want three.”

Like his fictional counterpart in the book, Mr. Syjuco came from a political family but declined to enter the business himself.

His real-life father, Augusto Syjuco Jr., known as Boboy, stepped down from a cabinet post in the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to run for Congress in national elections on Monday. So far, nearly three dozen people have been killed in attacks linked to those elections. While Mr. Syjuco is disparaging of the violence, he says he is not overly worried about his father.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Mr. Syjuco said. “He’s with Gloria Arroyo — in her party. He is entrenched in his district, and he has his bodyguards. So he is more protected than candidates from grass-roots parties.”

Mr. Syjuco said he did not want to draw too close a comparison between his own life and the book, but the parallels — the fictional Miguel Syjuco, an orphan, disappoints his doting grandparents when he fails to live up to their political ambitions — are obvious.

“My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, a politician, the president of his country,” Mr. Syjuco said. “I have two sisters and three brothers, and not a politician among any of them. I was my dad’s great last hope.”

Mr. Syjuco was unheard of before “Ilustrado” won the Man Asian Literary Prize, which shares a sponsor with the Man Booker Prize and recognizes the best Asian novel written or translated into English. Outside of the Philippines, he could not even get short stories published in journals.

“I got rejected left and right,” he said. “I wallpapered my wall with rejection slips, the way F. Scott Fitzgerald was said to have done.”

In fact, when “Ilustrado” won the award, it was still an unedited draft with no publisher.

Understandably, Mr. Syjuco had almost no expectation of winning. “I just wanted to get on the long list so agents would pay attention to me,” he said.

“I remember sitting in front of my computer, waiting for midnight — since the long list would be announced at that moment — and hitting the refresh button over and over. I did the same thing when the short list was announced. When I flew out to Hong Kong for the awards dinner, I thought I’d just eat a lot of Chinese food and get drunk.”

Miguel Syjuco was born in the Philippines to a Chinese-Filipino father and a Spanish-Filipino mother, into a family whose wealth was anchored in a soft-drink bottling company.

His parents moved abroad during the Marcos era, and Mr. Syjuco spent much of his childhood in Vancouver, British Columbia. “The first thing I wrote was in grade five. I tried to write a sequel to ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” he said.

He returned to the Philippines for high school and college and, as he says, “got onto the right path when I flunked out of economics in university.”

He and some friends put together Local Vibe, an entertainment Web site. But he could not free himself of family ties and expectations, so he decided to move back overseas.

He knocked around the United States, Canada and Australia, studying, writing and trying to stay financially afloat. He had entry-level jobs at The New Yorker, Esquire and The Paris Review, and earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Columbia University. He is finishing a Ph.D. at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.

“Ilustrado” starts off as a murder mystery. When Salvador dies, the draft of a politically biting masterpiece he had been working on disappears. The book then moves into what are, for the Philippines, complicated and interwoven issues of sex and poverty, migration and work, religion and governance.

Its short chapters come in a cacophony of fonts and voices. There are excerpts from the two main characters’ own writing, plus e-mail messages, newspaper articles, blog comments, flashbacks and dream sequences.

The style is postmodern (or, as some prefix-happy critics call it, post-postmodern) right down to the faux footnotes. The novel is short, sharp and funny, though some critics have called it overwritten. (“Yet it was the internecine intensities of the local literati that gossiped Salvador’s life into chimerical proportions.”)

“I don’t particularly like the postmodern tag,” Mr. Syjuco said. “It’s a novel of today, a contemporary novel. The way we consume information is fragmented.”

Mr. Syjuco explained that “Ilustrado,” which means “enlightened” in Spanish, refers to a period in the late 1800s when the Philippines was a Spanish colony and Filipinos traveled to Europe to be educated in the arts, sciences and politics.

“These young men, the ‘enlightened,’ returned home to aid in the 1896 revolution that ousted Spanish control,” Mr. Syjuco said. “There are 8.1 million Filipinos abroad now. They have the potential to be the new ‘ilustrado’ class. But of those 8.1 million, only 500,000 are registered to vote in the upcoming elections. Maybe they have turned their back on the democratic process.”

Mr. Syjuco, who has already sold a second book to a North American publisher, identifies himself as a Filipino author but says that overseas life gave him the distance needed to see his country’s problems.

“I don’t know if I could have written this if I had stayed in the Philippines,” he said.

He declined to predict what would happen in the coming elections.

“My book asks some tough questions, but it’s not the Great Philippine Novel,” he said. “I’m 33. I don’t have all the answers. If I did, I’d be running for president.”

Apr 18, 2010

Philippines Drops Mass Killing Charges Against 2 Brothers - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By CARLOS H. CONDE

MANILA — The Philippine government on Saturday dropped charges against two prominent members of a powerful political family accused of the mass killing of 57 people in November, the single worst incident of political violence on record here.

Although the main suspect in the massacre, Andal Ampatuan Jr., remains in jail facing multiple murder charges, the dismissal by the Department of Justice of the cases against two of his brothers — Zaldy and Akmad Ampatuan — surprised Filipinos and alarmed human rights advocates.

With the dismissal of the charges, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo “has moved another step closer to leaving a legacy of impunity for extrajudicial killings,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy director for Asia of Human Rights Watch.

The Ampatuans are the most powerful political family in the predominantly Muslim province of Maguindanao and are close allies of Mrs. Arroyo. According to prosecutors, Andal Ampatuan Jr. personally led the slaughter of the 57 opposition supporters on Nov. 23.

On that day, his men — among them police officers and members of a government militia — stopped the victims at a roadblock and then brought them to a hill where they were shot and hacked to death. Prosecutors say a government backhoe was then used to bury the bodies.

Image by Bikoy via Flickr

On Thursday, the authorities moved Andal Ampatuan Jr. to a maximum security facility in a Manila suburb, citing public safety. His father, a former governor of Maguindanao, remains in custody and is likewise facing charges.

Zaldy Ampatuan, who was a regional governor at the time of the killings, is the highest-ranking official implicated in the case. Both Akmad Ampatuan and Andal Ampatuan Jr. were mayors of towns in Maguindanao Province.

Prosecutors initially said the massacre could not have happened without the complicity of other Ampatuans, among them Zaldy and Akmad.

But on Saturday, Justice Secretary Alberto Agra said prosecutors had failed to establish a conspiracy involving the two Ampatuans. “Existence of conspiracy was not proven, and being relatives and having similar surnames does not mean there was conspiracy,” Mr. Agra said, according to The Philippine Star, a Manila newspaper.

Mr. Agra said that Zaldy Ampatuan had a convincing alibi and that he had presented plane tickets and phone records to show he was not in the province during the massacre. Akmad Ampatuan also had an alibi, the secretary said.

Mr. Agra also ordered the dismissal of similar cases against five other individuals, among them a crucial witness.

“This is evidence that the victims cannot get justice under the administration of President Arroyo,” Harry Roque, a lawyer for some of the victims, told reporters on Saturday.

There were also concerns raised about the successful prosecution of the suspects, numbering nearly 200, after at least one witness to the massacre and two of his relatives were killed, according to Human Rights Watch.

“The government has failed to adequately protect witnesses and their families, which means crucial witnesses are scared to testify,” Ms. Pearson of the Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Apr 13, 2010

In Asia » Examining the Arroyo Legacy in the Philippines

Image via Wikipedia

By Steven Rood

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has dominated Philippine politics this entire decade, first in January 2001 as a vice president who succeeded President Joseph Estrada on the heels of a “people power” protest (triggered by the suspension of the impeachment trial of President Estrada) – a succession that was confirmed by the Supreme Court. She then went on to serve as president longer than any since Ferdinand Marcos when she won a full six-year term in May 2004. That election was marred by significant controversy that peaked when an audio recording was leaked purporting to reveal Ms. Arroyo on the phone with Commission on Election Commissioner Garcillano talking about padding her vote margin. Her popularity (as measured by periodic citizen surveys) subsequently plumbed to depths never before reached in Philippine politics, and has consistently remained low for five years. We now watch and wait as the nation prepares to elect a new president on May 10, 2010.

Satisfaction ratings of Presidents

At the recent Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2010 Conference in Philadelphia in late March, the only session (of 282) that was devoted to the Philippines focused on Arroyo’s legacy.

Panel chair and author of several works on the Philippines, David Timberman, outlined four contrasts that he sees in the Arroyo Legacy: 1) The contested legitimacy and unpopularity (as measured in opinion surveys) with the administration’s remarkable staying power and “vitality;” 2) The continued defensiveness of the administration in the face of these attacks versus the success in making policy; 3) The effective wielding of presidential powers with the marginalization of other potential policy-makers; and 4) The lack of significant new investment or jobs in the Philippines and prevailing poverty, despite sustained GDP growth.

As a presenter, I pointed out that overall World Bank Governance Indicators show a decidedly mixed Arroyo legacy: between 2000 and 2008 there was a steady increase in government effectiveness and rule of law (under the consistent leadership of three successive chief justices), while at the same time, a steady decline in political stability, voice and accountability, and control of corruption.

Governance Matters 2000 to 2008

I chose to demonstrate the Philippines’ riddled history by quoting from a timeless 1954 Brookings Institution report about the need to make “resolute efforts to get rid of corruption in office.” But I also talked about Arroyo’s smart 2003 “roll-on roll-off” maritime initiative, which brought down the cost of shipping among the Philippine islands by 30 to 40 percent as a historic policy success.

Since President Arroyo announced in 2001 a switch from former President Estrada’s “all out war” policy to one of “all out peace,” significant, though sporadic, progress has been made between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Most recently, after an outbreak of fighting in late 2008, peace talks began once again in late 2009, International Monitoring Teams are on the ground, and an International Contact Group (of which The Asia Foundation is a member) is assisting in the negotiations. Focus now is on maintaining the peace, preserving the gains of the past years through negotiation, and handing off to the incoming administration, whomever it may be, on July 1. In the meantime, the very real dangers of relying on local strongmen for support both in politics and in counter-insurgency was demonstrated by the November 23 election-related massacre in Maguindanao that left 57 people dead.

Another presenter, Gwendolyn Bevis of Management Systems International, described the results of studies of the budgetary process, which President Arroyo has managed to dominate and manipulate throughout her administration. Aside from particular moves to withhold pork barrel allocations for opposition legislatures and to reduce the amount of influence Congress has on the budget, presidential power was increased by a general trend toward lump sum (rather than itemized) appropriation and the discretionary use by the president of previous years’ savings. A sophisticated budgetary team, with the persistence to examine the entire budget (the Philippine president can veto particular line items), maximized the effect.

Ronald Mendoza, an expatriate Filipino and economist with the United Nations, put the economic record of Arroyo into a historical perspective back to the Marcos period. This analysis helped to underscore the country’s boom and bust growth pattern, leaving very little opportunity for sustained economic and human development. During the most recent 2008-2009 crisis, remittances from Overseas Filipino Workers once again offered invaluable support. Mendoza observed that overseas workers have offered a continued de facto bailout of the country, which would have faced debt sustainability problems in the absence of these resource flows.

Similar to earlier administrations, the Arroyo regime failed to address key social and economic challenges relating to persistent poverty and inequality. Indeed, the recent growth spurt prior to 2008-2009 occurred while indicators of poverty and hunger increased. The recent boom period, while impressive on paper, created benefits that even Arroyo supporters admit were not broadly shared by most Filipinos.

Further, a lack of commitment to agricultural development is a major factor behind the Philippines’ transformation from a self-sufficient rice producer into the world’s top importer of rice. This also reflects the broader underdevelopment of the rural sector, in turn contributing to a pattern of growth that has left behind millions of Filipinos and failed to make major inroads in poverty reduction. Over half of families engaged in farming are below the Philippine poverty line, a figure which has remained largely unchanged since the mid-1980s.

The Arroyo legacy could be characterized by some improvements on the policy front, though they are inadequate and leave many governance challenges and social inequities largely unaddressed. As shown by the World Bank indicators, chronic problems such as corruption have worsened, a key reason behind the Philippines’ anemic progress in economic and human development. In addition, even the recent boom period beginning in 2001 and ending in 2008-2009 represents a missed opportunity to facilitate sustained change. This leaves many challenges for President Arroyo’s successor to take up on July 1 when the next Philippine president is inaugurated.

Note: In the 5th paragraph of this piece, Arroyo’s smart 2003 “roll-on-roll-off” maritime initiative was inadvertently called Aquino’s smart 2003 “roll-on roll-off” maritime initiative. The story has been corrected.

Steven Rood is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative for the Philippines and Pacific Island Nations. He can be reached at srood@asiafound.org.

Mar 12, 2010

Philippines: Protect Witnesses to Maguindanao Massacre

Image by thepocnet via Flickr

Two Relatives of Witnesses Killed; Many Suspects Remain at Large

March 8, 2010

(New York) - Philippine authorities should act swiftly to protect eyewitnesses to the November 2009 massacre of at least 57 people in Maguindanao province on Mindanao, and to protect their families as well, Human Rights Watch said today.

Concerns for the safety of witnesses are highlighted by the killings of two relatives of witnesses and the shooting of a third; the large number of police, military, and paramilitary personnel implicated in the massacre who remain at large; and lax security measures that allowed one suspect to escape detention, Human Rights Watch said.

"Witnesses won't come forward if there is a ‘second Maguindanao massacre' of witnesses and their families," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to act quickly to protect witnesses and their relatives, and to arrest and securely detain the remaining suspects."

On November 23, 2009, in the town of Ampatuan, Maguindanao, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, dozens of gunmen stopped a convoy that was en route to file Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael "Toto" Mangudadatu's candidacy for the upcoming Maguindanao gubernatorial elections. The gunmen summarily executed at least 57 people, including Mangudadatu family members and supporters, bystanders, and more than 30 media workers.

Those charged with the killings include members of the local governing family, the Ampatuans, together with police, military, and paramilitary personnel. Andal Ampatuan Jr., mayor of Datu Unsay and son of the Maguindanao governor, Andal Ampatuan Sr., is the lead suspect in the case. He was charged on December 1, 2009; he is in custody while his bail hearing continues.

Several eyewitnesses have come forward to testify about the massacre.

On February 21, 2010, the elder brother of one suspect-turned-witness, Police Officer 1 Rainier Ebus, was shot multiple times in Datu Piang and severely wounded. According to credible sources that could not be confirmed, Ampatuan's men had offered Ebus 5 million pesos (over US$100,000) to recant his witness statement. The brother was shot after he refused to do so.

Credible sources also told Human Rights Watch that another witness was offered 25 million pesos (over US$500,000) to recant his signed witness statement. He refused. Within weeks of testifying in court, two of his family members were shot dead. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) told Human Rights Watch that local police were investigating these crimes.

A member of the Ampatuan paramilitary forces told Human Rights Watch that the Ampatuans have placed a bounty on the heads of those who cooperate with investigators to testify against the Ampatuan family. He said that in late 2009, men linked to the Ampatuan family ordered him to kill one of the men involved in the massacre. The paramilitary force member said he escaped the Ampatuan fold after hearing that he was the next to be killed. He said he has learned that there is a 2 million peso (over US$40,000) bounty on his head.

Human Rights Watch urged the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to thoroughly and transparently investigate these killings and acts of intimidation against witnesses. To the extent that jailed Ampatuan family members are implicated, the NBI should investigate the Philippine authorities responsible for their custody.

The Justice Department, on February 9, filed charges against 197 people for 57 counts of murder on February 9, 2010. Arrest warrants have yet to be issued due to judicial delays, though some of those implicated are in custody charged with other crimes.

Of the 197 charged, 63 are police officers. Forty-nine of these police officers are under "restrictive custody"; the remaining 14 are "absent without leave." A Criminal Investigation and Detection Group spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that firearms are confiscated from police officers under restrictive custody and the officers are largely restricted to the police camp, though they can leave under guard. They remain on active duty and can be assigned administrative tasks.

Human Rights Watch questioned the effectiveness of this custody status since at least one police suspect, Anwar Masukat, escaped restrictive custody in late December or early January, reportedly swore an affidavit recanting his witness statement, and is now missing. Masukat had initially provided a signed statement implicating Ampatuan Jr. as the leader of the Maguindanao massacre. In his new statement, he pointed instead to another police witness as the massacre's mastermind. The Investigation Group spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that Masukat escaped restrictive custody while en route from Camp Crame, in Manila, to his unit in Maguindanao.

The threat to witnesses is highlighted by the government's lax detention of a suspect in custody, Human Rights Watch said. Retired Police Superintendent Piang Adam, the former Maguindanao provincial police director, escaped from the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Jail in Tacurong City between February 16 and 17. The Sultan Kudarat provincial police director, Senior Superintendent Suharto Teng Tocao, is a relative of Adam, and his jail guard, Taha Kadalum, was his cousin and has since been charged in relation to the escape.

Following this escape, the Philippine police chief, Director General Jesus Verzosa, ordered tighter security on all jail facilities and noted the need for a review of security systems and procedures. Human Rights Watch called on Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno to carry out an urgent review of the detention arrangements of all those implicated in the Maguindanao massacre and publicly report on the findings and measures taken.

Human Rights Watch stressed the need for stronger witness protection measures to ensure, in keeping with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's statement of November 25, 2009, that "the perpetrators [of the Maguindanao massacre] will not escape justice."

The United Nations special envoy on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, recommended in 2007 that the government ensure protection for persons who testify in killings for as long as they are at risk, and that they be provided housing and other assistance to ensure their security and well-being. Human Rights Watch made similar recommendations in its 2007 and 2009 reports about extrajudicial killings. None of these recommendations have been implemented.

Human Rights Watch called on the Arroyo administration to provide sufficient funding to ensure adequate protection for witnesses and their families, and urged the government to promptly investigate acts of witness intimidation and killing, and to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. Security forces and the Justice Department should take the measures needed to protect their physical safety, including relocation where necessary, and ensure that witnesses and their families are afforded appropriate housing. Witnesses who are themselves implicated in the killings should be appropriately - and safely - detained prior to trial.

Human Rights Watch also urged the Philippine Congress to increase significantly the penalties for intimidating or assaulting a witness. Currently, intimidating a witness incurs a fine of not more than 3,000 pesos (US$65) or imprisonment of six months to one year, or both. Offenses against intimidating witnesses should also be expanded to include offenses against their relatives.

"President Arroyo has a long way to go to live up to her promise that the perpetrators of the Maguindanao massacre do not escape justice," Pearson said. "The legacy of her administration will depend in great measure on the outcome of this horrific case."

Feb 27, 2010

Int’l peace monitors return to Mindanao

By Cynthia Balana
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:52:00 02/28/2010

MANILA--THE 60-MAN INTERNATIONal Monitoring Team (IMT) overseeing the ceasefire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is expected to return to Mindanao Sunday after both sides resumed peace talks last month.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, chief government negotiator, said in a recent interview the IMT members would come from Brunei, Libya, Japan and Malaysia.

The European Union, Qatar, Indonesia and Norway had also been invited to join the team, Seguis said.

The IMT, which has a one-year renewable mandate, would be redeployed on the first week of March, he added.

The Japanese Embassy in Manila said two Japanese development experts—Tomonori Kikuchi, first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines, and Yusuke Mori, second secretary of the embassy, would be sent to IMT headquarters in Cotabato City Sunday.

Both experts would be working on the socioeconomic development aspect of the IMT, including assessment of the needs for reconstruction and development, monitoring of development projects in the former conflict-affected areas, and the formulation of a comprehensive development plan.

“Japan has recognized the significance of the Mindanao peace process and contributed to its progress through various assistance projects called J-BIRD and participation in the International Contact Group among others,” the Japanese Embassy said in a statement.

Seguis said a 20-man team from Malaysia was also expected to arrive today.

On Feb. 17, an eight-man IMT advance team headed by Lt. Gen. Datuk Raja Mohammed Affendi bin Raja Mohamed, chief of staff of the Malaysian Armed Forces headquarters, arrived in Manila before proceeding to Mindanao to conduct an ocular inspection.

Abu Sayyaf militants raid Philippine village

Islamist militants have attacked a village in the southern Philippines, killing at least 11 people, military officials have said.

About 70 members of Abu Sayyaf, a group linked to al-Qaeda, raided Tubigan village on the southern island of Basilan, an army spokeswoman said.

Lt Steffani Cacho said homes had been raked with gunfire and set ablaze in a pre-dawn attack.

Philippines army reinforcements have been sent to the area, she added.

The militants were believed to have been avenging the death of a senior leader on nearby Jolo island, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold, Lt Cacho said.

However, Basilan police chief Antonio Mendoza said the attack had been motivated by a personal grudge with the village chairman.

'Victims asleep'

Seventeen people were wounded in the attack with nine in a critical condition, four of them children, said regional health chief Dr Kadil Jojo Sinolinding.

"Most of the victims were still asleep when they were strafed and then their houses were torched," he said.

Abu Sayyaf is the smallest and most radical of the Islamic separatist groups in the southern Philippines.

Last weekend, Abu Sayyaf commander Albader Parad was killed in an attack by Philippines troops on a rebel camp on Jolo.

Feb 23, 2010

Filipino Politicians Wield Private Armies, Despite Ban

By NORIMITSU ONISHI

Published: February 20, 2010

REINA REGENTE, the Philippines — Tata Uy and a dozen members of his militia were milling around their base, a bullet-pocked mosque on a hill overlooking forests and farmland here in the southern Philippines. Mr. Uy pointed to a spot a couple of miles away where gunmen loyal to his uncle were holed up.

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

A member of a militia formed by Tata Uy, whose family owns farmland in Reina Regente, in the southern Philippines.

As one of his men patrolled the area on a water buffalo, a rifle slung over his shoulder, Mr. Uy (pronounced OO-ey) explained that he and his uncle had a falling out four years ago. But skirmishes escalated to full-blown fighting last year after he made it clear that he intended to run against his uncle, a local mayor, in an election this year.

The decision was not an easy one. “He’s my uncle, after all,” said Mr. Uy, 40, adding that it was not made any easier by his uncle’s vow to kill him.

He has now built up his militia to 40 men. “If it weren’t for my private army,” he said, “I’d be dead by now.”

Mr. Uy is a rare politician in the Philippines, one who does not deny having a private army. As the country prepares for nationwide elections in May, politicians are expected to use these militias, as they have in the past, to safeguard their interests, intimidate rivals, rig votes and perpetuate the control of family dynasties throughout the country.

But even as half a dozen political candidates have been assassinated throughout the country in recent weeks, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has pledged to eradicate private armies by Election Day. Critics are skeptical, though, not just because previous governments have failed at similar attempts.

They say they doubt Mrs. Arroyo’s sincerity, pointing to her government’s past support of private armies and saying that she was only responding to the international outcry over one of the country’s worst acts of political violence. In November, in a town not far from here, militiamen loyal to the powerful Ampatuan clan — staunch Arroyo allies — massacred 57 people, including journalists and relatives of a political rival to the Ampatuans. The clan’s patriarch and several of his sons were indicted this month.

Private armies have flourished especially here on Mindanao, the country’s southernmost major island, where Muslim and Communist insurgents have battled the military for decades and American soldiers have hunted for members of Abu Sayyaf, the terrorist group, since 2002. Philippine governments have supported local politicians with private armies to help suppress insurgents and Islamic radicals, and these conflicts often become inextricably linked with clan warfare.

An independent commission established to disband the private armies has identified 74 of them, though other government officials have said twice as many exist. They operate in areas that are home to 7.8 million registered voters, out of a national total of 50 million, said Dante Jimenez, a member of the commission.

“If we don’t contain the private armies, there is the risk that there won’t be fair elections in these hot spots,” Mr. Jimenez said. “In a tight presidential election, the private armies in one region could tip the balance.”

That is precisely what is believed to have happened in 2004 when Mrs. Arroyo was in a close race for the presidency. Widespread fraud occurred here in the southern province of Maguindanao, the fief of the Ampatuans, the clan accused of being behind the November massacre.

Here in Reina Regente, a barangay or village in Maguindanao, the feud between the nephew and uncle began four years ago, according to the nephew, news media reports, local politicians and officials with a neutral cease-fire monitoring group. The uncle, Samir Uy, could not be reached for comment.

Early last decade, the uncle appointed the nephew as chief of another district village — technically an elected position.

“In Mindanao, the mayors choose the barangay chiefs and expect them to follow orders,” said Don Mangansakan, 31, the vice mayor of Pikit, a nearby town. “Tata didn’t listen to the wishes of his uncle, who got rid of him. It’s as simple as that.”

Further defying his uncle, Tata Uy ran unsuccessfully for chief in Reina Regente, his hometown, where his family is the largest landowner, with 124 acres. He said he began forming his own militia, spending $65,000 to buy 45 weapons over the years and recruiting 40 men, including some who worked on his land.

Such a force would rank as medium-size, said Mr. Jimenez of the commission. There are only a handful of truly large private armies — like the 400- to 600-member force belonging to the Ampatuans — all of them concentrated here in the south.

Experts say private armies are typically composed of moonlighting police officers, soldiers, Muslim rebels and average citizens. In 2006, Mrs. Arroyo issued an executive order that made it easier for local politicians to form private armies, or “civilian volunteer organizations,” to battle Muslim insurgents. But one result was that it also allowed ambitious clans to build up militias rapidly for their own use.

Here, family feuds not only become a proxy for the battle between the military and Muslim insurgents, but also fuel that conflict. In Mr. Uy’s case, he began developing ties with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a rebel group that advocates secession, though he says he is not part of the insurgency. His uncle has been allied with the government and the military.

In May, after Mr. Uy unequivocally stated his goal of unseating his uncle as the local mayor, his tractor ended up at the bottom of a river. That message was soon followed by two weeks of fighting with guns and mortars, pitting his uncle’s private army and the military against the nephew’s militia and hundreds of fighters from the Moro rebel group.

Most of Reina Regente’s 500 families fled, joining the thousands of refugees from other clashes in overcrowded camps.

Nowadays, Tata Uy said, he is preparing for the start of the campaign next month and is continuing to buy weapons with his farming profits. He said he had heard about the president’s campaign to ban private armies. “It’s a good idea,” he said, pausing, “but it’s not going to work.”

Critics of Mrs. Arroyo, who cannot run again because of term limits, said she had rejected demands to rescind her executive order easing the creation of militias, raising questions about her effort against private armies.

“If she was serious, she would have tried to do something about the private armies sooner,” said Alex B. Brillantes Jr., a political scientist at the University of the Philippines in Manila. “It’s too little, too late.”

Feb 3, 2010

Philippine Poll Shows Aquino Rival Catching Up

Image via Wikipedia

By OLIVER TEVES

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

MANILA— Lavish campaign spending has allowed the Philippines' wealthiest politician to close in on the son of democracy icon Corazon Aquino in the latest opinion poll ahead of May presidential election, analysts said on Tuesday.

Sen. Manny Villar's aggressive media campaign mainly accounts for his eight-point gain from December to January in one poll, leaving him only seven points behind front-runner Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III in the survey, said public administration professor Prospero de Vera.

The respected Social Weather Stations' January survey has Aquino as the top choice of 42 percent of respondents, down from 46 percent in early December. Villar, who made his fortune in real estate, was up to 35 percent from 27 percent.

The survey, commissioned and published on Monday by The Business World daily, interviewed 2,100 adult respondents nationwide and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

The presidential race is shaping up as a two-pronged battle between Aquino and Villar, both senators from sharply different backgrounds but with a similar message—uplifting the lives of a third of the population who live in abject poverty and cracking down on widespread corruption and political violence.

Aquino, 50, has anchored his campaign on running a clean government and restoring the credibility of the judiciary and Congress, which he says has been seriously eroded during President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's nine years of tumultuous rule.

He said he took the cue from his mother, who fought dictator Ferdinand Marcos and was swept to power in the 1986 "people power" revolt. Corazon Aquino's death from cancer in August led to a massive outpouring of grief, which analysts credit for her son's popularity.

Villar, 60, who portrays his rags-to-riches life in his colorful political advertisements, is promising to end poverty in the country. Appealing to mostly poor voters, from whose ranks he rose, Villar vows to create jobs and provide housing—his main source of income as a leading property developer.

But Villar is also facing censure by his colleagues in the Senate for his alleged role in the rerouting of a highway so that it passes close to his real estate developments. He said the charges are trumped up.

Aquino is being criticized by his rivals as an underachieving legislator with no track record who is riding on his mother's reputation.

Ramon Casiple, head of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, said Aquino has been delivering "motherhood statements ... all visions, but no strategy." He said Aquino needs to step out from the shadow of his family's name and connect with voters, letting them know who he is as person.

The three-month campaign period officially kicks off Feb. 9, but candidates are already allowed to put out radio and television ads.

The amount candidates spend is not disclosed until after elections, but already Villar has the most number of ads. A 30-second prime-time TV ad costs up to 220,000 pesos (US $4,700).

Jan 21, 2010

2009 in review: Philippines' netizens step up to the plate

Image by FriskoDude via Flickr

by Tonyo Cruz

Whether through Facebook, blogs, instant messages, Twitter or Plurk or the very familiar SMS, more and more Filipinos in 2009 got productive online and showed the nation a preview of great things to come.

There are now over 24 million Filipinos online, or about one out of every four Filipinos nationwide, according to the website Internet World Stats. The figure in 2000 was a measly 2 million.

As of the third quarter of 2009, 5.78 million were already on Facebook. The figure was 1.38 million higher than it was in the second quarter. No wonder that Facebook is the most-visited website in the Philippines, according to Alexa.com.

An interesting note: The Philippines is fast becoming one of the most avid users of Facebook. If all countries are having a contest on how many and how frequent their citizens use Facebook, the Philippines will end up at a respectable 13^th place.

The original Filipino favorite, Friendster, revamped its look this year but doubts remain whether it can stop droves from fleeing it in favor of Facebook.

Elsewhere, more entrepreneurs and avid photo snappers have set up shop in Multiply.

A Yahoo! Philippines-Nielsen survey released this year revealed Filipinos’ online habits and confirmed a previous study that said that Filipinos excel in taking advantage of what the internet has to offer. For instance, a McCann Universal survey of 30 countries revealed that Filipinos lead everyone in online photo and video sharing and social networking. We are second only to South Korea when it comes to blogging.

Filipinos are online to win and we showed this in many ways before 2009 draws to a close. Two shining examples easily come to mind.

First, the spectacular online “bayanihan” (cooperation) in the aftermath of supertyphoon Ondoy (international name: Ketsana) which saw Filipinos acting like a cool conductor of an orchestra composed of all tools available at our disposal at the time. The objective was to save a considerable part of the country, including the capital, from total ruin. The result was soothing music to the ears of the millions adversely affected by Ondoy and the string of supertyphoons that followed its trail. Even the world took notice of such feat.

Second, the victory of Efren Penaflorida and his project that uses pushcarts for popular education among the poor. That he did not succumb to the despair and cynicism that pervades the mindset of the educated today is in itself already a victory. But because the online community knows a true champion when we see one, we all helped catapult him as CNN Hero of the Year through our online votes. Perhaps in the mind of all those who voted, we just wanted the world to remember the Philippines not because of a lying, stealing, cheating and killing president, but of such a great person like Kuya Efren and his great project.

Barring high rates and low-quality services from the telcos, netizens and mobile users are set to put their indelible mark on the forthcoming elections. Bloggers have started the admirable Blogwatch.ph project to provide bloggers a focal point to engage politicians and political parties, even as more initiatives are said to be in the works.

As we welcome 2010, we can only imagine the great things that await the Philippines, online and offline, coming from their internet-savvy and mobile citizens.